Reports that the Blackwater private security company had deployed an anti-pirate vessel to the waters off Somalia are premature, a company spokeswoman says.

The 183-foot, helicopter-equipped McArthur remains at anchor in Virginia Beach, Va., said Blackwater spokeswoman Anne E. Tyrrell in a brief phone interview.

But it's ready to sail on a moment's notice.

"There is some talk of getting it over there now in anticipation of security contracts, since it takes 28 days to get to Somalia," she said.

Blackwater's proposals to shipping companies in London in early December were "favorably received," she said, but have yet to yield any contracts.

The company's reputation suffered another blow on Monday, Dec. 15, when five of its former security guards were indicted on voluntary manslaughter and other charges in connection with killings in Iraq

And its image problems don't end there.

Founded by former Navy SEALs, Blackwater faces a multimillion-dollar fine for allegedly shipping hundreds of automatic weapons to Iraq without the necessary permits, McClatchy newspapers reported last month.

"Some of the weapons are thought to have ended up on the country's black market ... but no criminal charges have been filed in the case," the Washington bureau's Warren Strobel reported.

Today, the U.N.Security Council approved a U.S. resolution allowing countries to pursue Somali pirates on land as well as at sea.

The resolution gives its member countries the right to use "all necessary measures" by land or air to stop anyone using Somali territory to plan, help or carry out acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea, the BBC reported.

Tyrrell said she was "not aware" of any interest from governments in hiring Blackwater to help provide security for its flagged vessels in the pirate-infested region.

The North Carolina-based company has made proposals to private shippers to deploy the McArthur and its 14-member crew as a "deterrent" against pirate attacks, Tyrrell said.

"The ship wouldn't fire unless it was fired upon," she said.

A little over a decade ago I sat in the living room of Hamid Gul, a still-powerful former head of Pakistani intelligence, listening to him rail in cold fury about the United States.

A hawk-like man with laser black eyes, Gul was known as the "father of the Taliban" for his role in midwifing the fundamentalist Afghan coalition into a fighting force that took Kabul and ruled the country with a puritanical zeal until ousted by the U.S. in the wake of 9/11.

Now he's been fingered by the U.S. as one of four former top Pakistani intelligence officers supporting Islamic terrorism.